The Shakespeare Institute Review - deadline 26 Aug 2012

The first issue of The Shakespeare Institute Review was successfully launched at the end of the recent BritGrad conference. The issue, which explores death and mortality in Shakespeare and showcases a marvellous range of contributions, can be found at this link: www.shakesreview.com . Following on from this, we warmly invite submissions for the second issue of the Review, an online academic journal to which postgraduate students of Shakespeare and related programmes are invited to contribute.

Please find attached the latest call for papers. Students are encouraged to submit papers between 1,500 and 2,000 words on topics relating to Shakespeare and the superhuman, with a deadline of 26 August 2012.

Detailed style guidelines can be found here: www.shakesreview.com/style-guidelines.html . Selected submissions will be published in the second issue of the Review, to be launched in late 2012. Further details are in the attached document. Please share it with students of your and other departments who may be interested. If you have further questions or comments regarding the issue, mailing list, etc., please let us know by email at shakesreview@gmail.com or via the contact form on www.shakesreview.com/contact.html .

The Shakespeare Institute Review is an online academic journal funded by the Birmingham University College of Arts and Law, and to which students at the Shakespeare Institute and on other postgraduate programmes are encouraged to contribute. Each issue has a theme to which contributors are invited to respond.

Continuing on from the first issue of the journal, which explored death and mortality in Shakespeare, we thought it appropriate to segue into an examination of human limitations and the superhumans who transcend them. 'Superhuman' might refer to a 'normal' human, with otherwise unusual or exceptional skills, abilities, or powers, or to an 'improved' human, e.g. by genetic modification, etc. Students are therefore encouraged to submit papers between 1,500 and 2,000 words on topics relating to Shakespeare and the Superhuman. Possible topics might include, but are not restricted to:

• Is our notion of superheroes Shakespearean? What place does the superhuman occupy in our collective imagination, from a metaphysical or spiritual standpoint? Why are we fascinated by, e.g., comics, or the Olympics? What psychological need does superhumanity answer; does the 'super' liberate us from human constraints?

• Critical examinations of Shakespeare's magical, mythological, heroic, supernatural, psychic, etc., characters. In particular, we would be interested in papers on the idealised and idolised. This could include close reading, comparative analysis, etc.

• Considerations of the political, ethical, religious, spiritual, and/or existential significance of the superhuman in the Early Modern period, and of how Shakespeare makes use of (and plays off) those conceptualisations in his works.

• More intensely personal and experientially engaged writing on how Shakespeare's works have affected your understanding of what it means to be human, and what it means to be beyond human? Is it just a matter of possessing certain powers, or is it a quality of mind and attitude? How do we define humanity; where is the line between the human, the super, and/or the divine?

All submissions will be reviewed by the editorial board (Thea Buckley, Paul Hamilton, and Giulia Sandelewski), and those submissions that are selected will be published in our second online issue next term. For further information, please contact us at shakesreview@gmail.com.